World stumbles toward climate summit

Denis D. Gray Associated Press Yahoo News 9 Apr 11;

BANGKOK – Nineteen years after the world started to take climate change seriously, delegates from around the globe spent five days talking about what they will talk about at a year-end conference in South Africa. They agreed to talk about their opposing viewpoints.

Delegates from 173 nations did agree that delays in averting global warming merely fast-forward the risk of plunging the world into "catastrophe." The delegate from Bolivia noted that the international effort, which began with a 1992 U.N. convention, has so far amounted to "throwing water on a forest fire."

But the U.N. meeting in Bangkok, which concluded late Friday after delegates cobbled together a broad agenda for the December summit, failed to narrow the deep divisions between the developing world and the camp of industrialized nations led by the United States. These may come to plague the summit in Durban.

Generally, developing nations, pointing to the industrialized world as the main culprit behind global warning, want an international treaty that would legally bind countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Washington and others reject it, focusing instead on building on the modest decisions made at last December's summit in Cancun, Mexico.

The Durban agenda calls for discussion on both viewpoints.

"I believe that we now have a solid basis to move forward collectively and that governments can deliver further good results this year, provided every effort is made to compromise," the U.N.'s top climate change official Christiana Figueres said. She expressed regret that the road to Durban is proving a slow one.

Although the Bangkok conference was not geared to tackle the core issues, some movement was at least expected in implementing decisions reached at Cancun. These included the formation of a multibillion-dollar Green Climate Fund to aid developing nations obtain clean-energy technology, setting up a global structure for these nations to obtain patented technology for clean energy and climate adaptation and rounding out a plan to compensate poorer nations for protecting their climate-friendly forests.

Some deadlines for accomplishing these have already passed and it appears little of substance was accomplished in Bangkok, with that work being passed on to the next meeting set for June in Bonn, Germany.

Although also not a pledging session, there was no indication that nations were prepared, in U.N. parlance, to "raise their ambitions," or reduce emissions of greenhouse gases above earlier pledges.

The current total pledges are deemed by the United Nations to fall way short of cuts required to keep temperatures rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.8 F) above preindustrial levels — an agreement reached in Cancun by 193 countries.

"We have regrettably spent the entire week negotiating the agenda," said Dessima Williams from the Caribbean island of Grenada. "This is unacceptable, and especially so for small islands who are running out of time if we are to avoid damage from rising sea levels and other climate change impacts. We cannot go on negotiating forever."

But that's what seems in the cards.

Developing countries are keen to preserve the landmark 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the only international existing agreement on reducing emissions. It is expiring at the end of 2012 and some countries, including Russia and Japan, have signaled that they would not make further pledges under an extended protocol.

The European Union is undecided and the United States, which rejected Kyoto, favors each country setting its own targets for emissions but has not ruled out an international pact if all major economies, including China, now the world's no. 1 emitter, are parties.

"We are not prepared to go forward with the binding obligation for ourselves which would not apply to the other major economies," chief U.S. delegate Jonathan Pershing told a news conference.

Environmental activists at the conference mostly backed the developing world position, and, noting the unfolding nuclear plant disaster in Japan, urged a global move away from both fossil fuels and nuclear power toward clean, renewable energy sources.

"For five years, rich countries have been ducking and weaving over their commitment to legally binding targets. The Bangkok meeting has finally given us clarity on countries' real intentions — most of them have been paying lip service to being serious about tackling climate change," said Asad Reham of Friends of the Earth.

Pablo Solon, the Bolivian delegate, said that even reaching the 2-degree goal would prove "unsafe for millions of lives and livelihoods across the world."

Citing figures from the U.N. and Stockholm Environment Institute, he said that to meet even that target, the world would need to cut emissions by 14 gigatons each year by 2020. At best, he said, countries currently have pledged to reduce emissions by 8.7 gigatons, at worst 6.6 gigatons with more of the pledges coming from the developing rather than industrialized world.

Under the 1992 U.N. treaty, the world's nations promised to do their best to rein in carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases emitted by industry, transportation and agriculture.

Since then, scientists have warned that without dramatic reductions in emissions, the world will risk inundation of islands and coastal areas as polar ice caps melt. Other foreseen dangers include the melting of river-feeding glaciers, the extinction of plant and animals species and extreme, unpredictable weather conditions.

U.N. Climate Talks Risk Backsliding on Cancun Outcome
David Fogarty PlanetArk 8 Apr 11;

Arguments over the agenda that have stalled U.N. climate talks in Bangkok this week show that some nations are trying to row back from hard-won agreements reached last December, Russia said on Wednesday.

The December deal in Cancun included a Green Climate Fund to manage $100 billion a year in aid to poor nations by 2020 and to limit a rise in average world temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times.

It also won consensus on measures to protect tropical forests and a framework to help poorer nations adapt to rising seas and greater weather extremes, in a series of agreements viewed as saving the fraught U.N. climate negotiations from collapse.

But the April 3-8 talks in Bangkok, the first major climate meeting since Cancun and meant to agree on a plan to build on the December agreements, have stalled because of a dispute over an agenda presented by the 131-member G77 grouping plus China.

Rich nations say that agenda doesn't reflect all the agreements in Cancun and pushes for the resolution of key outstanding issues by the end of the year instead of trying to work through things step-by-step as agreed in Cancun.

"The hopes and the expectations were that after Cancun we will start more focused work on building up on the outcome of Cancun," said Oleg Shamanov, head of the Russian delegation.

He said the idea was to come up with the specific elements of what would become the formal decisions at major climate talks in the South African city of Durban at year's end.

"Instead we are now trapped and locked into purely procedural discussions about the agenda that could have been avoided.

"That highly disappoints me that we are pulling back from the dynamics that we achieved in Cancun," he told Reuters in an interview.

FIREWALL

Cancun left unresolved tougher issues such as the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N.'s main weapon in the fight against climate change. Poor nations want Kyoto's fate resolved by Durban.

Kyoto's 2008-12 first phase binds nearly 40 rich nations to emissions targets. But no successor pact that would expand or replace Kyoto from 2013 is in sight and rich and poor nations are deeply divided on the shape of any new pact.

Poorer nations want Kyoto to remain as the main agreement. Under the pact, developing nations are obliged to take voluntary steps to curb emissions.

"My assessment is that some parties that are a bit scared of the outcomes of Cancun, that they are too far reaching and that they are trying to take a precautionary position," said Shamanov, adding that Russia was keen to see progress in the talks.

"I would like to see the work focused on specific elements where we have more or less clear mandates emanating from Cancun. We have to go step by step."He said poorer nations needed to understand it was impossible to renegotiate or revise the Cancun Agreements "through the backdoor of procedural disputes on the agenda."

"I think that is what it is about. It's all about a firewall between the actions of developed countries, commitments of the developed countries and the possible actions by developing countries."

(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

EU warns climate talks too slow
Yahoo News 8 Apr 11;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The European Union warned Friday that diplomacy on climate change was moving too slowly after UN-led talks in Bangkok eked out an agreement on an agenda for further negotiations this year.

"Our overall sense is things are moving slow, too slow for Europe's taste. And we cannot achieve what we need to achieve before the end of this year with this speed," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said.

"Too often too much time is spent on how to proceed," she told reporters on a visit to Washington. "What we need is to come down to the content side of this and that is urgent."

The four-day session in Bangkok, which was marked by feuds between wealthy and developing countries, eventually achieved its goal of setting an agenda leading up to an annual UN climate conference in South Africa in November.

But the Bangkok talks largely put aside big picture issues on how nations will cut their greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

Hedegaard said it was critical to move soon on cutting emissions, pointing out that national pledges have not come close to the UN-led goal of containing global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

"What people sometimes forget is that there is a time factor when we talk about the climate. It actually does matter whether we start acting globally sooner or later," she said.

The European Union has championed international action on climate change, including through its "cap-and-trade" system that restricts carbon emissions but allows businesses to trade in credits.

Before Washington, Hedegaard visited California, which is launching the first cap-and-trade system in the United States. The effort by the largest US state marks a sharp contrast with skepticism over climate change in the US Congress.

Hedegaard said she agreed with Governor Jerry Brown to keep in touch so that the EU and California systems may eventually be linkable.

"California is not just a very huge American state, it's also the seventh or eighth largest economy of the world. So of course it's a rather strong signal if it gets done," Hedegaard said.

A bill supported by President Barack Obama to set up a nationwide cap-and-trade system died last year in the Senate, with the rival Republican Party arguing that it would be too costly.

Hedegaard met in Washington with lawmakers from both parties as well as officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, which Obama has tasked with regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Hedegaard said she was fully aware of the political realities in Washington but hoped the United States could move forward.

"It is very hard to understand that in this country it would not be possible to make a policy on, for instance, how to address energy efficiency, because the potential is just that big," she said.